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Italian court records date from the 1400s, and those that are indexed are done so by the names of those arrested. Most crimes never reached the courts but were settled on a local level. Search court records as a last resort.

Since the unification, police records have been kept on every Italian citizen. When applying for certain jobs, a felony certificate [certificato penale] is required to prove that the applicant’s record is clean. These police records are held by the court [tribunale] of each province and copies may be requested from the court office [casellario giudiziale]. See also the section in this outline on "Notarial Records."